After a round do you ever say to yourself: “I played OK but I could have scored better”. Maybe it was the putt(s) that lipped out, or the errant shot that found a pond. Either way, you feel that your score should have been better.
Well… How do you improve that score? Practicing seems to be the obvious answer; that, or taking a lesson. But, before you take the step to lowering your scores, I suggest you first determine which parts of your game need improvement.
Start tracking your stats!
Have you read my previous post on March 29th? (Click Here to view post) You will see the apps I have in my “Mobile Golf Bag”. Two of those apps, Hole19 and GolfNet, give you access to managing your golf stats.
Now if you are just learning the game or you aren’t looking to improve your game, these apps may not apply. For the herd of golfers that are trying to improve their game it is always a benefit to know your strengths and weaknesses.
Growing up as an athlete I always wanted to know my statistics. Basketball was my game of choice growing up and I wanted to know my shooting percentages from all over the court. This allowed me to analyze where I needed improvement. The stat I want to discuss is your golf game is putting.
First you need a tool to track your putting. Writing them down on the scorecard is a start but you need to record putting stats over a period of time, to get a better analysis. Now you can use a notebook to record your stats or even creating an Excel sheet to calculate averages and totals.
Currently I am using the GolfNet app in monitoring my stats and highly recommend the app for you to track your stats. There is a feature, when posting your score hole-by-hole (HBH), to track your putts as well as many other features. Within the app you can collect all the data and see your putting percentages.
Now that you have your stats…what does it mean? Let’s look at some numbers: If a scratch golfer shoots even par, hitting every green in regulation, then they would have recorded 36 putts (Par 72 course).
That means that the player’s putts are 50% of their score! Which means if you are a golfer that shoots a 90…45 putts is a great percentage. Now you know there are other variables that can affect your score, but just focusing on putting and trying to putt 50% of your shots, or less, is great!
Ok now to the fun part, for the numbers folk, is the percentage of making putts as you move further from the hole. Here are some fun statistics off of the PGA Tour website. http://www.pgatour.com/stats/categories.RPUT_INQ.html
Now considering they are on Tour, think of what distance you can match Phil at 90%…inside of 10 feet. See what happens to the stats when they back up to 10-15 feet. Pretty scary how fast the percentage drops, even for the pros!
For 15-20 feet the percentage doesn’t drop as much, but a 57% drop from 10 feet and in is a ton!
20-25 feet the percentage takes another hit to nearly 68% from the 10 foot mark. In knowing this 2 putts from this distance is the goal.
With these stats you can breathe a little easier in knowing what the best in the world are doing on the green. These stats can help you understand the distance that is most important on the green is the inches between your ears. I hope you enjoyed this post and let me know your statistic thoughts and questions.
